The Complete Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham - II - The World Over Read Online Free PDF Page B

presence that she saw the examining magistrate and the lawyers who had been engaged to defend Tito. They had decided to plead insanity. Experts for the defence examined him and decided that he was insane, experts for the prosecution examined him and decided that he was sane. The fact that he had bought a pistol three months before he committed the dreadful crime went to prove that it was premeditated. It was discovered that he was deeply in debt and his creditors were pressing him; the only means he had of settling with them was by selling the villa, and his father’s death put him in possession of it. There is no capital punishment in Italy, but murder with premeditation is punished by solitary confinement for life. On the approach of the trial the lawyers came to Laura and told her that the only way in which Tito could be saved from this was for her to admit in court that the count had been her lover. Laura went very pale. Harding protested violently. He said they had no right to ask her to perjure herself and ruin her reputation to save that shiftless, drunken gambler whom she had been so unfortunate as to marry. Laura remained silent for a while.
    “Very well,” she said at last, “if that’s the only way to save him I’ll do it.”
    Harding tried to dissuade her, but she was decided.
    “I should never have a moment’s peace if I knew that Tito had to spend the rest of his life alone in a prison cell.”
    And that is what happened. The trial opened. She was called and under oath stated that for more than a year her father-in-law had been her lover. Tito was declared insane and sent to an asylum. Laura wanted to leave Florence at once, but in Italy the preliminaries to a trial are endless and by then she was near her time. The Hardings insisted on her remaining with them till she was confined. She had a child, a boy, but it only lived twenty-four hours. Her plan was to go back to San Francisco and live with her mother till she could find a job, for Tito’s extravagance, the money she had spent on the villa, and then the cost of the trial had seriously impoverished her.
    It was Harding who told me most of this; but one day when he was at the club and I was having a cup of tea with Bessie and we were again talking over these tragic happenings she said to me:
    “You know, Charley hasn’t told you the whole story because he doesn’t know it. I never told him. Men are funny in some ways; they’re much more easily shocked than women.”
    I raised my eyebrows, but said nothing.
    “Just before Laura went away we had a talk. She was very low and I thought she was grieving over the loss of her baby. I wanted to say something to help her. ‘You mustn’t take the baby’s death too hardly,’ I said. ‘As things are, perhaps it’s better it died.’ ‘Why?’ she said. ‘Think what the poor little thing’s future would have been with a murderer for his father.’ She looked at me for a moment in that strange quiet way of hers. And then what d’you think she said?”
    “I haven’t a notion,” said I.
    “She said: ‘What makes you think his father was a murderer?’
    “I felt myself grow as red as a turkey-cock. I could hardly believe my ears. ‘Laura, what do you mean?’ I said. ‘You were in court,’ she said. ‘You heard me say Carlo was my lover.’”
    Bessie Harding stared at me as she must have stared at Laura.
    “What did you say then?” I asked.
    “What was there for me to say? I said nothing. I wasn’t so much horrified, I was bewildered. Laura looked at me and, believe it or not, I’m convinced there was a twinkle in her eyes. I felt a perfect fool.”
    “Poor Bessie,” I smiled.
    Poor Bessie, I repeated to myself now as I thought of this strange story. She and Charley were long since dead and by their death I had lost good friends. I went to sleep then, and next day Wyman Holt took me for a long drive.
    We were to dine with the Greenes at seven and we reached their house on the dot. Now